Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Wouldn't that get her hacked off?

Nah, Lolth's an "eat her own" sort of diety. She'd probably get a chuckle out of the idea of a tarantula in her booze.

It'd depend on how it got there. If it crawled in or she put it there, then yeah, she'd probably get a kick out ofit, if anyone else did? She'd have them killed. Lolth has a strict 'Do not harm spiders' rule for her fo.llowers, even at the costs of their lives they must not harm spiders. Even disturbing a web while a spider is resting on it can lead to extreme punishment.

Yeah. Not only is she the QoDWP, she's also the Queen of "Do As I Say, Not As I Do".

Which is probably one of the upsides of an absolute monarchy.

Sure is, if you are the monarch .
Or, in that case, the tarantula-munching Goddess.

Let's face it, if everyone followed her example she'd be out of minions pretty quickly.

Given the way she and the drow are depicted in books, adventures and CRPGs, I'm surprised they haven't been wiped out by themselves by now.

Well, to put it bluntly, I'd always assumed they were screwing each other faster than they were killing each other off. Their murder rate can be as ludicrously high as you like, just as long as the birth rate keeps up with it.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that drow are far more fertile than other elves and are the only elven subspecies to regularly have multiple births. That could help to explain it.

Actually, they supposedly have multiple foetus pregnancies, and then the childen slaughter and consume each other in the womb until only one is left. Like sharks.

I reiterate. They should be long gone.

The reason they're still around is because Lolth doesn't tollerate war on a large enough scale for it to happen. It's basically a society held in place by conditioning and fear. She placed her clerics in places of absolute power and she rules them unquestioned.

The reason they are still around is they are popular i am guessing . Well, unlike other elves they do have a lot of children for canon fodder and such, but still.

They do seem to be the only elves not in decline.

No, just pent up in isolation and cannibalizing on themselves, assassinating anyone in their way and sacrificing fellow drow to the spider goddess a couple times a week.

It is not a workable or sustainable society.

I'm not going to argue the point, since I actually do agree with you and (for once) I can't be bothered to play devil's advocate.

In my own setting, I reduced the drow murderousness (or at least their internecine murderousness) considerably for just this reason, making them a basically stable society where assassination is largely restricted to an occasional last-resort tool of the noble houses rather than an everyday occurence. The idea of every single role in society being filled through the system of 'dead man's shoes' is just silly. As is the idea of sacrificing one's own kind except in very occasional circumstances. A lot of what is considered 'common knowledge' about drow society is actually just elven and eladrin propaganda in my world.

Which, ironically, makes my drow seem more like the drow society we see in YAFGC!

I think it's funny that a webcomic can portray the drow more believably than the official fluff does.

It's not really that out of control. There are strict rules for doing things in Drow society and those that break the rules (which usually just means those that got caught) are punished severely. Most of the deaths that occur in Drow society are not quick, they pick a target and do their best to destroy them, and since they've got healing magic to keep a victim around untill they've been satisfactorily broken this can take centuries if done right. Pretty much all conflict in Drow society is one on one, with allies and rivals supporting either side in bigger squables and occasionally one family wiping out anouther but those are not common occurance as it is not an easy task and the price of failure is complete annihalation.

Basically, there's less killing going on in a drow on drow sense than one would think from such a murderous and sadistic race since there's so much in the way and the penalties are not to be laughed at. Lolth would never tollerate he followers delving completely into such self destructive behaviour for long, it would rob her of too many worshippers and thus too much power.